Wilhelm Lappe

07/07/2016

Doing business in Berlin VII: Salaries and taxes

Even though we’re talking about entrepreneurship, salaries are an important topic. Firstly because many people are coming to the Berlin startup scene as an employee and not a founder, and secondly because startups should pay according to the standards of the city. It’s difficult to talk about averages. Technical people are the most highly demanded

28/06/2016

Brexit: an opportunity for Berlin to grow

It’s the perfect moment to keep talking about the Berlin Startup scene. This week some news (info in German, and more) indicates that Berlin could benefit from the British Brexit. This is a real opportunity for Berlin, but I guess it’s not going to happen immediately. In the long term there are some problems. Many

21/06/2016

Doing business in Berlin VI: Living here

The quality of life in Berlin is good but the winter weather is not (although it’s not been bad the last 3 years). The city is still cheap – a bit less than Madrid or Barcelona and half the cost of Paris, a third of London. You’ll pay for renting an apartment, but probably you

02/06/2016

Doing business in Berlin V: Incorporating in Germany

How to manage legal issues is one of the most common questions for new companies arriving in the city, and also one of the bigger fears. But for people who have already gone through the process, it was not a barrier and they remember it as a single step in the development of their business.

19/05/2016

Doing business in Berlin IV: market and trends

Getting the numbers of the market is quite complicated. When you read different sources you may get contradictory information, and the scene is constantly changing so that it’s difficult to keep them updated. Here is a first approach. The entrepreneurial ecosystem of Berlin has between 1,800 and 3,000 startups, more than 50 acceleration programs and

12/05/2016

Doing business in Berlin III: coworking and accelerators

As in many other cities coworking is more than a trend, it’s a reality. There are many places where you can work in many different ways: part or full time, flex or fixed, or with your own office. Personally I think it’s much better working from one of them than staying at home, in order

05/05/2016

Doing business in Berlin II: events and networking

One of the best things about Berlin, in being a hub for startups, is the incredible amount of events happening every day and the number of startup-related people you can meet here. Also the level of professionalism is quite high and you can learn a lot. There are a lot of events – more than

28/04/2016

Doing business in Berlin I

Berlin is an amazing place, and not really complicated to get into, at least not in the beginning. Probably the first question is about the language: no worries. In the startup world English is enough, and of course for daily life German is useful, but it’s not a barrier if you don’t know it. And

26/11/2015

Final thoughts about how to run hardware startups

Don’t be afraid. A text like this usually highlights complications and problems that I would prefer to call challenges. Many of the successful projects didn’t have any clue about all the phases they should pass through. They just started working and discovered each time the next step to be solved and they did it. Having

12/11/2015

The team and partners in hardware startups

In startups we always say “team is the key” and here, of course, it’s true. Many different profiles are needed, and it’s so difficult to have all of them from the beginning. Really, you’re not going to need everyone at the same time, so you can be creating different teams for different phases of the